True, women cannot
fight, and there is no call for any great number of female nurses;
notwithstanding this, I believe, that, to-day, the issue of this war
depends quite as much upon American women as upon American men,--and
depends, too, not upon the few who write, but upon the many who do not.
The women of the Revolution were not only Mrs. Adams, Mrs. Reed,
and Mrs. Schuyler, but the wives of the farmers and shoemakers and
blacksmiths everywhere. It is not Mrs. Stowe, or Mrs. Howe, or Miss
Stevenson, or Miss Dix, alone, who is to save the country, but the
thousands upon thousands who are at this moment darning stockings,
tending babies, sweeping floors. It is to them I speak. It is they whom
I wish to get hold of; for in their hands lies slumbering the future of
this nation.
The women of to-day have not come up to the level of to-day. They do not
stand abreast with its issues. They do not rise to the height of its
great argument. I do not forget what you have done. I have beheld, O
Dorcases, with admiration and gratitude, the coats and garments, the
lint and bandages, which you have made. Tender hearts, if you could have
finished the war with your needles, it would have been finished long
ago; but stitching does not crush rebellion, does not annihilate
treason, or hew traitors in pieces before the Lord. Excellent as far as
it goes, it stops fearfully short of the goal.
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